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The Hollywood TV Producer: His Work and His Audience.
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1972
Year
Media StudiesMuriel G. CantorDocumental CinemaTelevision StudyFilm StudyOrganizational CommunicationTelevision ProducersInteractive TelevisionHollywood Tv ProducerBusinessTelevision ProductionPolitical CommunicationMass CommunicationArtsPopular CultureJournalismTelevisionFilm Studies
Little is known about TV production beyond journalistic accounts, and *The Hollywood TV Producer* (1971) was the first serious examination of the constraints, conflicts, and rewards in producers’ daily lives. The author interviewed eighty producers over two seasons to comprehensively examine how their employers and workplaces influence decision‑making. Cantor applies a social‑system of mass communications framework, showing how producers select stories for series and bring movies to prime time, drawing on interviews with eighty Hollywood producers. Cantor’s findings confirm that producers must please financiers to stay in production, and that content is shaped by artistic, professional, social, economic, and political norms, insights that remain unchallenged.
Except for accounts of journalists, dissident employees, and an occasional congressional committee focusing on crime and unethical practices, we have known very little about how television programs are produced. The Hollywood TV Producer, originally published in 1971, was the first serious examination of constraints, conflicts, and rewards in the daily lives of television producers. Its insights were important at the time and have not been challenged. Using as her framework the social system of mass communications, Muriel G. Cantor shows how producers select stories for television series and how movies end up in prime time. In order to get a comprehensive look at the inner workings of the TV industry and its producers, the author interviewed eighty producers in Hollywood over a two-season period. She probed to discover how the people producers work for and where they work influences their decision-making. As Cantor shows, critics of television who suggest that to remain in production, a producer must first please the business organization that finances his or her operations, are largely correct. Cantor shows that content is determined by a combination of artistic and professional factors, as well as social, economic, and political norms that have developed over time in the industry.